Secretly OP 2: Banner of Command

If there’s one thing that an individual must internalize to develop as a League of Legends player, it is this: towers, not kills, win games.

Taking down towers affords your team a number of benefits. Global gold for your team, map control, and taking you one step further toward destroying a vital inhibitor.

Of course, typically there are a number of enemy champions standing between you and the tower who must be dealt with in one of a variety of ways. Killing them and then taking the tower is often the most direct method. Towards that end, items that provide you with a tremendous amount of killing potential (or which prevent enemies from doing the same to you) are important.

It is for this reason that I believe Banner of Command is overlooked. It is easy to rationalize purchasing other items with Banner's humble stats and active based on what used to be a little-used summoner spell. In a survival of the fittest setting in which the biggest and baddest are the playmakers and gametakers, it is easy to gain tunnel vision and only ask yourself how an item will help you win fights.

Despite what I know to be the massive tactical benefit offered by Banner, I’ll also try to appeal to the number crunchers by discussing some of its raw numbers the item provides and its build path.

Emblem of Valor: This item, as well as the cloth armor and rejuvenation bead it builds from, grant huge early game sustain. As a solo lane, the early armor is invaluable against the AD brawlers and assassins that have become common picks in season 3. As a support, this provides early defense and sustain against harass.

Fiendish Codex: Opens avenues for early aggression with a first item Amplifying Tome and extremely fast cooldown reduction for spamming champs.

Banner itself is a versatile item. The benefits of building from an emblem of valor give your team a health regeneration aura that stacks with that of Aegis/Bulwark. It is one of only three items in the game that grants both armor and AP. I can’t emphasize enough how powerful that is for an AP champion with the current popularity of AD assassins like Zed and Kha’Zix.

The passive is where Banner really starts to show its power. Increasing nearby minion damage by 15% allows you to use your wave to do huge amount of damage to enemy towers. This compensates for the normally weak push of AP champions.

Now lets get to the good part; the active. Replacing the promote summoner spell from season 2, the promote active on Banner. On a 180 second cooldown, Banner can promote a siege minion to a more powerful minion that can tear down towers. Before 35 minutes, you can promote every other siege minion in your lane.

This is an invaluable tool for pushing down lanes and gaining map control. It improves existing strategies and creates entirely new tactics you can use to gain advantages by effectively providing you with a 6th team member to dedicatedly split push. There are a variety of scenarios in which it can provide huge benefit that just can’t be quantified by attribute bonuses.

Split Pushing: This item is the great equalizer for AP champions against typical cast of AD and global ult split pushers. Casters can use their (typically) superior wave clear to take their own wave to the enemy tower and let banners passive grind down the tower where their lackluster auto attacks may have previously taken a considerable amount of time to push the tower. This widens the pool of potential split pushers to just about any mobile AP champ.

Global Pressure: If you know Baron or Dragon is spawning soon then you can ensure then you can put the enemy at a disadvantage by clearing caster minions of an enemy wave and promoting your siege minion to ensure that your lanes are pushing hard. From there your team can simply sit in the river and wait. Since your lanes are pushing you are under no pressure to force and engagement while the enemy team is forced to decide between sacrificing a global objective or their base.

Sieges: If your team is sieging mid lane, you can dip into their jungle and visit top or bottom, clear the enemy wave, and promote a siege minion to create a split push without risking your team getting a engaged upon in a disadvantageous 4v5 team fight. This can also be an effective siege breaker. Backing into a side lane and creating a strong push will eventually force the enemy team to back off and relieve pressure.

Team Fights: If you defeat the enemy team in an early team fight and are forced to choose between taking a tower and a global objective you can simply promote a siege minion and have them do the grunt work while you take Baron, Dragon, or the enemy buffs. Alternatively, if your team is defeated then you can use the item to rapidly counter push when they return to their base to heal or buy and potentially make up for the loss with a turret.

Ganks: After a successful gank in your lane it is often tempting to push to the enemy tower, either to take their tower for the gold and map control or simply to deny your enemy farm by causing their tower to clear your minion wave. This can be a risky endeavor if you are low on health or have used valuable cooldowns during the fight, especially if any of the enemy champions are missing. With Banner you can simply promote and play it safe while pushing objectives.

Counterganking: In the case of solo lanes, when you see your lane opponent leave lane and expect they are attempting a gank then you typically have two options. Either push to punish their absence or attempt to follow them and contest the gank. Banner allows you to do both and can put a huge amount of pressure on roaming solo laners, forcing them to stay in lane or risk losing another tower every time they leave.

Farming: An aspect particularly of interest to supports, the promoted minion credits its kills to you. Many times during the game you can miss out on CS by moving with your team to take greater objectives and push advantages. Using Banner mitigates the losses by providing you with the gold that it receives from minion kills, allowing you to recompense some of the loss by farming in absentia.

Another treat for those of you who are more inclined toward numerical benefits. There are a number of champions who receive a huge benefit from Banner.

The 15% damage buff applies to minions of any variety, including champion-specific minions. Elise, Heimerdinger, Malzahar, and Yorick all previously gained this benefit and recently Zyra has been included in the list as well. Elise gains a massive damage spike to her Skittering Frenzy with this bonus as well as a considerable amount of sustain from spellvamp. Heimerdinger, Malzahar, Yorick, and Zyra become even more annoying lane opponents by increasing their remote damage with turrets/voidlings/ghouls/plants. Yorick is worth mentioning individually as, although he has little use of the AP, any of his teammates can pick up the item to make his Omen of Death do nearly 100% of its subjects damage. 

As all of these champions have minions that have increased damage based off either AP or AD, the damage buff applies multiplicatively with these scores in a manner similar to that of Rabadon's Deathcap. Late game this can more than double the effective gold value of Banner of Command.

So there you have it. The ultimate map control item. Great stats, an aura for your team, and (on the right champion) the raw power of a last slot item. KDA is nice, but it is hard to take solace in being up in kills while watching your nexus explode. In short: push towers, control the map, and win.